“So,” said Carrier, regarding him steadily, terribly, “you are the thing that dares to denounce me to the Safety, that ventures to find fault with my work!” From under his pillow he drew Marc Antoine's letter to Robespierre. “Is this yours?”
At the sight of this violation of his correspondence with the Incorruptible, Marc Antoine's indignation awoke, and revived his courage.
“It is mine,” he answered. “By what right have you intercepted it?”
“By what right?” Carrier put a leg out of bed. “So you question my right, do you? You have so imposed yourself upon folk that you are given powers, and you come here to air them, by—”
“You shall answer to the Citizen Robespierre for your conduct,” Marc Antoine threatened him.
“Aha!” Carrier revealed his teeth in a smile of ineffable wickedness. He slipped from the bed, and crouching slightly as if about to spring, he pointed a lean finger at his captive.
“You are of those with whom it is dangerous to deal publicly, and you presume upon that. But you can be dealt with privily, and you shall. I have you, and, by—, you shall not escape me, you—!”
Marc Antoine looked into the Representative's face, and saw there the wickedness of his intent. He stiffened. Nature had endowed him with wits, and he used them now.
“Citizen Carrier,” he said, “I understand. I am to be murdered to-night in the gloom and the silence. But you shall perish after me in daylight, and amid the execrations of the people. You may have intercepted my letters to my father and to Robespierre. But if I do not leave Nantes, my father will come to ask an account of you, and you will end your life on the scaffold like the miserable assassin that you are.”
Of all that tirade, but one sentence had remained as if corroded into the mind of Carrier. “My letters to my father and to Robespierre,” the astute Marc Antoine had said. And Marc Antoine saw the Representative's mouth loosen, saw a glint of fear replace the ferocity in his dark eyes.